Maen Achwyfan Cross
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The Maen Achwyfan Cross is a standing cross at Maen Achwyfan in Flintshire. It was erected in around AD 1000 in a spot east of Offa's Dyke (and which might therefore have been considered English territory). What it commemorates or the reason for its erection are lost to history: there no surviving dedicatory inscription nor record.
The cross is today in the care of Cadw.
The Maen Achwyfan Cross is a particularly fine example of an Anglo-Saxon slab-cross, fashioned from one large stone. It stands some 11 feet high, and has a small disc-head bearing an engraved cross.
The shaft of the cross tapers as is typical for such standing crosses, and is decorated all over with intricate knot-work – carvings of interlaced patterns found in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon art of the Dark Ages. The cross is mounted in a quadrangular base-block (now beneath the ground). At the base of the eastern face, a small figure holding a staff or spear is framed by the loops of the design, while figures and stylized animals are included in the patterning on the sides.
Similarities have been noted with crosses found in Cumberland, Cheshire and across north Wales, and these suggest a Northumbrian tradition influenced by Viking design.
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